Thursday, October 09, 2003

A Superior Mint

I first met Smints when they were left in our Netherlands hotel room. Just a little blue and white box, but, somehow, special. There was no lid. No, instead there was a sort of button that you pushed down, which causes a little white plastic "hand" to pop a tiny triangular mint out. It was like magic. The white sort-of-button thingie had a letter "S" contained inside an inverted, rounded triangle, like a mellow Superman symbol.

Supermint. I was in love.

They are super minty and sugar free, using Xylitol instead. I have no idea what Xylitol is, but it sounds space-agy and scientific. The box even says "Powerful Mints" on the front. Cool Mint Instant Freshness.

They come in other flavors/colors, too. We have some Lemon Smints at home. This makes perfect sense to me, because I've owned a Lemon Mint plant. There is an Orange Mint currently dying on my patio. Completely natural flavors, to my mind.

While flying back from England, we finally emptied one of the Smints boxes and, in a sense of naughty adventure, I peeled back the blue outer box to reveal the mystical one-mint-at-a-time-in-the-little-hand-thingie mechanism. I'm not telling, but it was clever.

I searched high and low (well, there aren't a lot of high or low places in this redneck farmland-turning-suburbia place I live, but still) and finally found a new Smint source. I have my little blue box with me, the mints kept securely and sanitarily in the little blue box and dispensed precisely one at a time.